("Where's the path?", "Yes it does, doesn't it?")
On 03/05/12 14:47, Andy Street wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 12:58 +0100, Andrew Chadwick wrote:
>> By now, h=footway seems merely a specialisation of h=path. The _only_
>> information it adds is that it's normally used by pedestrians, or that
>> it is built to be used by them. Using the more specific tag conveys
>> useful information information about the footpath's place in the
>> transportation network. The same sort of specialisation applies to
>> h=bridleway and h=cycleway.
>
> The thing I dislike about footway, bridleway, etc. is that they mix the
> physical characteristics with access information. Using your definition
> above I can think of a number of foottracks, bridletracks and even a
> footunclassified.
Well, yes and no. If the signed public footpath across Farmer Giles's
field has great big ruts along it from the pigswill tractor, I'd say
_that's_ the primary defining use, not its signage as a footpath. Plus
in my book it's probably too wide and vehicled-up to honestly call a
h=path or a h=footway.
The dirty secret of the hybrid presets I made a while back is that they
happily allow you to make h=tracks (and h=unclassifieds) which are
designated public footpaths. They call whatever ends up in highway=* the
"physical aspect" of it, but you're not limited to the suggested values.
They're rather complete with the access tags to allow that to happen
sanely, but that seems to me to be the right approach for a preset which
you're invoking as a shortcut anyway.
And that's fine in my book: you tag a highway by whatever usage has the
most impact on the character of the way. Heavier vehicles and bigger
animals make bigger messes (providing "used by" evidence), or the ways
are built up to suit them (providing "built for" evidence). Sometimes
you see both, if you're lucky.
What I'm suggesting for new or intermediate users is having the
documentation recommend roughly the same approach (designation and
fine-grained highway), minus the plethora of access tags you have to use
to represent E&W RoWs fully. Keep the instructions really simple to
attract new users, and don't confuse them with details about
implications or full access values. h=footway and the other more
specific kinds of h=path fit into this structure best; they're really
simple, and make the information that new users can gather as useful as
possible very minimally. h=path is somewhat useless unless it's used as
a genuine "dunno" value like h=road, and we shouldn't be recommending it.
--
Andrew Chadwick
_______________________________________________
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
